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Final Rankings/Results

So the final rankings came out the other day. I think they pretty accurately represent the collective bodies of work of each of the teams involved. Of course, you can make arguments for certain teams being higher or lower (I’m surprised MIT isn’t in there, and GAC should clearly be ahead of Trinity at least), but the thing that strikes me are the huge drop offs between the respective “tiers.” Emory is clearly the best, but the 1-12 teams all have several good wins. Then, there’s the 13-19 teams who have a couple good wins each, and no bad losses. Washington and Lee, Mary Washington, and Skidmore provide the middle ground (Skidmore could have been higher ranked with better scheduling; they didn’t play any ranked team outside the top 11). After that, there are a bunch of teams who sort of beat up on each other. I don’t remember there every being such a defined divide between teams at the end of the season. It’s usually much more of a spectrum, but without further ado, here are the rankings, with little reminders of what the teams did this season. I’ll leave the summarizing to d3tennis:

23 comments for “Final Rankings/Results”

Razumovsky also improved significantly as the year went on. He may have lost to Koenig in the regular season but he also beat Lane 6-2 6-2 at nationals as well as a victory over Nerenberg who played above Koenig during dual matches

Not really… Individual rankings are a huge part of the end of year rankings. Raz had more significant wins compare to K so my guess that even John Browning as National chair could not justify better ranking for Kowalski which he probably deserves.

i agree as well, yes he played fairly okay this season. im questioning browning though. in the fall, 5 and 6 for emory had more impressive results. both were ranked in the 30s if i am not mistaken. also those 2 only lost 1 match total if im not mistaken…those were stronger spots than kowalski and even goodwin. wagner seemed very impressive as well, but kowalski looked like a weak link

Steve Costa

June 18, 2012 at 11:49 am

No losses at 3 or 4 all year, undefeated in the NCAA tourney in singles and doubles, and a few a a few of losses at court 2 and he is the weakest link. Come on now.

Anonymous

June 18, 2012 at 12:52 pm

You have to consider that they simply didn’t have the games to play higher in the lineup, right? It seems like people are continuing to pick nits with Browning’s championship team, a team that went UNDEFEATED. Wagner also beat a very tough Matt Micheli and CJ Williams at Nationals, so he cemented his spot at 3. Emory was clearly led by their upperclassmen, but their freshmen had no fear in the big matches.

b

June 18, 2012 at 3:20 pm

I agree with you. If you go undefeated in singles and doubles in the ncaa tournament you can’t be too weak of a link

Anonymous

June 18, 2012 at 4:53 pm

Let the coach do their job. It sounds absolutely ridiculous to question someone else when A) you’re not in their position and B) they just won an NCAA Championship.

The only thing I question is how Browning hasn’t won an National Coach of the Year award yet.

marvin pleat

June 18, 2012 at 7:08 pm

but the part i think that he was talking about is not just the ncaa tournament. we will c how the lineup changes next year…id be very surprised if the freshman from 5 and 6 were not put at the top of the lineup next year. i have seen all of the emory freshman play, and i am a fan of these players. browning may have done something fishy with the lineup however. i wasn’t impressed with K and W, nothing offensive towards those 2, it’s just what was very noticeable to me that the others seem to be able to play at a somewhat higher level than kowalski and wagner. take juniors into account, or the fall tournament for instance.

Anonymous

June 19, 2012 at 11:41 am

There are so many different factors that go into where a certain player plays. One guy can look way better than another, or have been ranked much higher, but in reality it’s the intangibles that determine a players success. People questioned Michael Goodwin at 1, when Chris was a freshman, but he ended up winning it all that season. Most of the time it’s silly to question a coaches reasons for determining their lineup. They are with their guys everyday.

Anonymous

June 20, 2012 at 1:45 pm

take juniors into account? Juniors and tennisrecruiting has nothing to do with how good a player someone is, especially not when college starts. Its the end of a season and your talking about juniors and the fall semester??? That just doesnt make sense

marvin pleat

June 21, 2012 at 2:49 pm

well let us not forget that the lineup appeared as if it was never subject to change, and Kowalski started playing 2 to replace goodwin at the beginning of the season. how could that make sense for the first match (the one closest to the fall tournament and juniors)? in what way did the others not prove that they were better than kowalski? it seems like the lineup idea was to throw that position with kowalski and keep more better players at the bottom of the lineup. credit to browning for thinking about that so early on–sure payed off.

d3tennisguy

June 22, 2012 at 4:17 am

Come on, man. Let it go. Just because Halpern and Ruderman did “better” in the Fall doesn’t mean they’re better players. Also, Kowalski and Ruderman both lost to Goodwin by almost the same score. Just because Kowalski played him a round earlier doesn’t mean Ruderman was necessarily better. Also, I’m sure Browning played challenge matches to determine the line up. It’s not like he’s throwing the players in there. Perhaps Kowalski beat both of them in challenge matches? Plus, there are like 15 weeks between Fall regionals and the start of the season. Nobody has ever improved a lot in 15 weeks?
Finally, as has already been pointed out, this stacking claim is essentially baseless since Kowalski won all of his matches at #3 and 4 anyways (and the three matches he lost at #2 were in third sets). It would be one thing if he had a drastically different winning percentage than the #5 and 6 guys, but he doesn’t, so please just stop. It’s ridiculous

Anonymous

June 22, 2012 at 6:56 am

Yeah this Emory bashing is getting boring. Why don’t people start talking about the second biggest story of the season: Amherst’s unfathomable choke.

Anonymous

June 16, 2012 at 9:48 am

I have a hard time with the notion that the #3 player has 2 losses to #50, and losses to #30 and 31, Koenig and weichert. There has to be a better system than just a bunch of coaches sitting around trying to figure out the rankings. Human error and objectivity should be taken out of the mix and some sort of computerized system should be adopted

Well, the rankings definitely aren’t perfect, and a computer algorithm would obviously best, but there’s way the ranking committee could actually consider every match every player in consideration for the top 50 plays. Going from the results of the NCAA individual tournament is just a necessary expedient. Plus, who cares? They’re individual rankings. They don’t mean anything. Individual rankings don’t effect recruiting for teams (unlike the team rankings), the national rankings don’t effect seeding for any sort of national tournament next year (unlike regional rankings), and everyone knows they are largely arbitrary. Example: Koenig is ranked two spots ahead of Cawood. How much crossover in results can there be between the #2 from Cruz and the #1 from Denison? Not much, I’m guessing.

are the individual rankings normally dictated so heavily by the individual tournament results? I feel like they disregarded most of the regular season results and placed an unfair emphasis on the tournament results

Im not sure, in doubles it does not seem too rely hevily on the individual tournament. Bowdoin remained pretty high given that the lost first round of the tournament and the team that beat them, Redlands, ended up 12 in the nation